Denzil Smith

Biography

Denzil Smith is a versatile Anglo-Indian actor, known for playing the role of Jinnah in Viceroy’s House (2017), The Lunchbox (2013), The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) and The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015), the Emmy award-winning television series Delhi Crime (2019) and P.O.W. Bandi Yuddh Ke (2016-17) as Lala for which he won the Indian Television Academy Award Best Actor in a Negative Role (2017). Based in Mumbai, Smith began his acting career on stage in 1988 with Pearl Padamsee’s Les Liaisons Dangereuse where he first worked with Naseeruddin Shah, becoming a member of Shah’s Motley Productions. By 1998, he also began working extensively with Lilette Dubey’s PrimeTime Theatre in productions such as On a Muggy Night in Mumbai, Sammy, August: Osage County and “Gauhar”. These plays toured both India and various cities in North America, UK and Europe, South-East Asia and Australia. One of Smith’s early films was Mango Soufflé (2002), which was promoted as “first gay male film from India.” He then went on to play a range of characters from a Tibetan Monk in Paap (2003), a gangster against Amitabh Bachchan in Ek Ajnabee (2005), a professor in Braman Naman (2016) and Marathi film Manjha (2017), Manipuri militant in Disney’s Jagga Jasoos (2017), the comedic villain in Disney’s Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi (2018), detective in Badla (2019) and Dimple Kapadia’s spouse in Sanjay in Christopher Nolan’s Tenet (2020). More recently, Smith has returned to the small screen as the Maharaja of Kalyan in the British series Beecham House (2019).